I would have assumed the safety system would have detected a seat belt not closed and stopped the ride. I know they check the panel of green lights before they start the ride so the ride is at least aware of the seat belt status.

Back in the mid 90's I was at DisneyWorld with family and friends. We went on Body Wars much to the pleasure of my mother who enjoyed the fantasic voyage and works in a hospital lab. It was that attraction that she discovered motion sickness.

The worst part was four hours later when we tried to get some ice cream her travel tourist wallet with the 7 7 day park hopping ticked and about 300 cash was missing from her bag. Back tracking through four hours of attractions is not my idea of a goodtime. Finally we get back to body wars and cast member informs that she did fnd the item with it's contents and sent it to lost and found.

The items were retrieved and we each got an extra scoop in celebration.

These days the seat belt sensors would definitely be tied into the control system, but in those days it was a manual system, checked before departure, and the belt sensor was able to make contact a tiny bit before actually latching.

You're correct, the motion was dialed back after a short period because it was making nearly everyone sick. Unlike Star Tours, there weren't a lot of good visual references, and the motion was quite rhythmic. The result was almost guaranteed to create nausea.

I volunteered for Cast Member "Test and Adjust" for Toy Story Midway Mania when I was a CM at Disneyland Resort. Luckily nothing went wrong with that. It operated perfectly on the few runs I took through it. I can't say the same for my arm. Pulling those "spring action shooters" for round after round after round non-stop gets a bit tiring after a while.

I was also to be on a Cast Member tour of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage show building "caverns" when our tour was canceled because they needed to get a sub out of dry-dock and had to lift the internal catwalks. Turns out even with the catwalks lifted an unloaded sub sat just a bit too high to comfortably navigate the caverns. Our CM "tour" group was quickly converted to "ballast". I did get a backwards ride in the sub with all the maintenance lights on. That was cool.